Walkabout: Our Favorite Brooklyn Buildings
For December, I’d like to feature my favorite buildings, and yours. Each column will highlight favorite buildings in mostly Brownstone Brooklyn: row houses, apartment houses, free standing homes, churches, commercial buildings, schools and civic buildings, as well as favorite architectural features or ornament. My Tuesday column will feature some of my choices. I’d like to…


For December, I’d like to feature my favorite buildings, and yours. Each column will highlight favorite buildings in mostly Brownstone Brooklyn: row houses, apartment houses, free standing homes, churches, commercial buildings, schools and civic buildings, as well as favorite architectural features or ornament.
My Tuesday column will feature some of my choices. I’d like to have people write and tell me your choices, so Thursday’s column can show what the readers think are the most interesting buildings. I don’t have a car, and can’t get to a lot of far-flung locations, so if you have photographs to accompany them, that’s even better.
I’ll feature them in the article, find out what I can about them, and put all of them in my Flickr pages, of course, crediting your screen name for photos and entries.
If not enough people reply, you’ll just get my faves. So send in those entries. Leave building names (if any) and addresses, and suggestions in the comments below, as well as links to Flickr or other photo sharing sites. Photos can be sent to my email: montrosemorrisATyahooDOTcom.
Buildings don’t have to be old, important, or great, just enjoyed by you. I’m looking forward to your participation. Have a safe and Happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I’m glad so many people have questions and show great curiosity about the buildings and places around us. Not to curb your enthusiasm, but some of these requests are going far beyond my poor powers of investigation. Some are worthy of an entire article, and will take a while to investigate, and some, I just don’t have the capacity to find out, or the time to do it. Some info is tantalizingly out of reach because of pesky details like you have to be a student, faculty or staff to access a certain university’s databases. Other venerable institutions don’t have a lot of info on line. The nerve!
However, I will do what I can. I wish I had the staff (and the salary) of Christopher Gray at the Times. Please continue to send in your list of favorite buildings, and your choices will start to appear this coming Thursday.
Joe from Brooklyn: I agree with your selections! I live in the neighborhood and am a big fan 🙂
Christ Church by Richard Upjohn in Cobble Hill is a beauty. I also am always mystified by the Masonic Temple on Lafayette Avenue and Clermont in Fort Greene…it is an attractive building with such a secretive past.
M. Morris, how about the Rosario Candela building on Plaza W., at Union, the one sometimes called the Flatiron of Brooklyn. I have wondered what room is at the pointed triangle part of the building where there is just *one window*, if it is a hallway or closet, etc, :-). Does anyone know anything of the floor plans? This curiosity comes from walking by it almost daily and the quote below. From the top view on Google maps, the building looks like a fleche or an arrowhead.
A very short google search yielded this clue:
“An admirer of cryptology, codes and puzzles, Candela sometimes incorporated these things into his interior blueprints.”
Quote from: http://sfctoday.com/features/29-brooklyns-very-own-flatiron-building.html
Happy Thanksgiving!
Dtimas – thanks for your Montauk Club link. Do you remember when brownstoner had a “condo of the day” in the Montauk?
http://bstoner.wpengine.com/brownstoner/archives/2009/02/
condo_of_the_da_132.php#comments
I’d love to know more about some of the mansions still standing on Bushwick Ave…
Here’s a few “off the beaten path.”
1.The Wyckoff-Bennett house – http://www.bklyn-genealogy-info.com/Town/dutch/wyckoffben.html
2. Henderick I. Lott House – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrick_I._Lott_House
3. 1930’s Slate Tudors of Marine Park – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BrooklynOldBuilding.JPG
4. Manhattan Beach, Brighton Lines, Marine Park and Flatbush Ave, Ditmas Park, LIRR Brighton Lines. http://who-will-kiss-the-pig.blogspot.com/2008/10/monday-night-in-marine-park-brooklyn.html
Montrose, I’d like to hear about the story of some blocks: the gorgeous part of President St, roughly New York Ave to Kingston Ave, which have incredibly gracious mansions. Who laid them out, who set the rules for appearance, who designed the houses? Were they built on spec or individually?
I would love some information on the current state of historic Erasmus Hall (circa 1780) which is a colonial wood clapboard building in the courtyard of the 1890’s Erasmus High school building in Flatbush. I hear it is in bad shape but you can’t really see it from the sidewalk.
Way too many favorite buildings to count, and others that are no more. And you’ve helped me fill in the blanks on so many I’d long admired but knew nothing about. I am thankful that Brooklyn still preserves so many of these beauties and thankful for the new landmark districts deignated this year — Prospect Heights, Ocean on the Park, Alice and Agate Courts, Fillmore Place, and looking forward to more in 2010 (CHNII!). Happy Thanksgiving to you!